Fluorescent green logic

摘要

Japanese scientists are applying logic to the protein that causes jellyfish to fluoresce green. Takahiko Nojima, and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, have created a system that uses protein synthesis to report on the success of four different biochemical logic gates. Analogous to computer logic gates, biochemical logic gates are used to direct simple biological functions.The system consists of two parts: a logic gate that amplifies the DNA that codes for the protein and a report gate where the protein is expressed. In the first part a polymerase enzyme amplifies the DNA of interest - the template DNA - in a process called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).